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Drug Prices Still Rising

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Shortly before taking office, President-elect Trump famously said that drug makers were “getting away with murder” and vowed to “bring down drug prices.” But a new analysis by Pharmacy Benefits Consultants found that pharmaceutical companies have raised average wholesale prices on hundreds of drugs during the first 14 months of the Trump administration.

The biggest price increase was for Phlight Pharma’s Synerderm, a topical ointment that saw a 1,467 percent price hike. AbbVie’s Humira, which is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and is the most widely prescribed drug in the world, saw a 19 percent hike.

Axios' Bob Herman notes that the prices don’t reflect the discounts and rebates that are widely used in the industry, but “price hikes still affect everyone — co-pays and deductibles are often based on drugs' list prices, and uninsured patients can find themselves on the hook for a drug's entire list price.”

Speaking in New Hampshire about the opioid crisis on Monday, President Trump revisited the topic, saying the White House would hold a press conference in “about a month” to discuss its plan to lower drug prices, while claiming that “we’ve already saved billions of dollars for our country, and it’s reflected in much lower drug prices.”

Here’s a sample from the new report’s 81-page list, showing the 20 drugs included in the analysis with prices hikes of 200 percent or higher: